South Yorkshire Times, November 25th 1944

Hard Pounding

General Eisenhower, like Wellington at Waterloo, is seeing who can pound longer.  It is a test of many qualities, besides endurance.  Supplies, equipment, manoeuvrability, communications and a good many more things all come into the reckoning. Winter warfare has its own special terrors of which the Allied troops are experiencing their fill just now. The Reichswehr is up against it, too. Hitler’s soldiery is getting hit hard. To their lot defeat is added, as a make-weight with misery and discomfort.

On the other hand, the foul weather is helping to preserve their rear communications from the terrible air strafing which broke them in France.  Their supplies are within easier reach, their escape routes are less precarious.  While the British, American, and French troops are advancing over a terrain cut to pieces by shell fire, mine and bomb craters, and the traffic of two armies, victors as well as vanquished, the Germans have the best of the going. A month of bright frosty weather might make a big difference to the sway of battle, but November, December and January in the Low Countries and Alsace-Lorraine are scarcely likely to provide such desirable meteorological conditions.  And so, with Allied technical and numerical advantages negatived for the time being, the conflict on the Western Front has developed into a murderous slogging match, with the Nazis making the wiliest possible use of every topographical gesture of the ring.

With Antwerp effectively cleared – and doubtless in something like full use as a supply port, now, the Allies have achieved an orthodox campaigning lay-out designed for the exploitation of those considerable physical factors which are in their favour.   Now, however a new factor emerges.  General Eisenhower, without mincing matters, has indicated that the present rate of progress cannot be maintained in the face of present strength of resistance, without an unsparing use of certain munitions of war.  He wants more ammunition, winter clothing trucks and guns and makes it abundantly clear that the energy and speed with which these munitions are manufactured and delivered can have an effect on the losses his armies are called upon to bear.  There can only be one answer to this call.  That which General Eisenhower asks for must be quickly forthcoming.

Quite obviously, and quite rightly, the Allied Commander in Chief is not prepared to gamble with the lives of his soldiers on the problematic question of German endurance.  His plain speaking should be appreciated, not only by those responsible for the organisation of military supplies, but also by the workers in pit, forge, and factory who furnish the steel sinews of war.  It is our clear duty to pour upon the heads of the German army a mounting weight of fire and metal until resistance is smashed for good and all.  Even if sustained pressure of this sort means a prodigal use of the material necessities of war to the delay and detriment, perhaps, of reconstruction designs with which a war-weary generation had begun hopefully to concern itself, the position admits of no choice. The complete destruction of German militarism is the first, the only, immediate consideration. General Eisenhower has said that the Battle of Germany will be largely fought this side of the Rhine.  It is on now. It was no part of Allied strategy to allow the Nazis a winter breathing space, and so the whole front is alive.

The tough task of battering the last breath out of Hitlerism has begun and the home and industrial fronts must dovetail unfalteringly into the final all-out effort.